It’s week four of the One Room Challenge. If you missed the first weeks you can catch up on them here: week 1, week 2, and week 3!
If you are new to the blog, welcome! I am a financial auditor by day and started this blog to pursue my passion of design, renovation, and all things home. We bought our house two and half years ago and are slowly renovating it room by room.
We are overhauling an upstairs bedroom that we are transforming into an office for this challenge. We started with a room full of boxes housing office supplies, craft supplies, and random décor.
If you read last week’s post you know I debated changing plans for one corner of the office. In my original plan I had a cozy corner for reading or working, with a leather chair, side table, and lamp. However, I started thinking that we JUST finished our den this spring during the last One Room Challenge (see the reveal here) to be used for that exact purpose. Instead, I started thinking of other uses ways I could use this corner of the room. That’s when I came up with the idea of a craft table. Yes, we have breakfast nook and a dining room where I can very easily do projects, however, since we have the space in the office I thought it would be nice to have a designated area just for crafts that would not be all over the kitchen and dining room. Several you weighed in on Instagram and the vote was clearly for the craft table over the cozy chair! And I completely agree! Craft table it is!!
I’ve mentioned before, but I am trying really hard to be intentional about what I buy for this space and am putting a focus on re-using and re-purposing existing pieces of furniture to fit our needs in this office. Yes, I have purchased some things: rug, chair, and the roman shade. I will probably also buy a plug-in pendant light that can be swagged and supplies for a DIY pin/display board. But I am using our existing desk, storage cabinet/bookshelf, lamp, décor, and other office supplies.
The corner of the office that was up for debate was going to have a chair, side table, and lamp that I planned to re-purposed from other rooms in our house so I knew if I was going to turn the corner into a craft table area I had to also use existing furniture because the budget I allotted for this room was already used. Currently in our house we have three dining-ish tables (one 10 seat table in our dining room that I found at a thrift store for $25!! – check the post out here, one small pedestal table in our breakfast nook, and one unused table that was sitting upstairs in a spare bedroom collecting dust). The reason we have a table we were using is because this is the table we bought for our first apartment. It’s a nice table, however it is not extendable (which we really wanted for the dining room), and I felt like it was slightly too large for our breakfast nook. So instead we got the 10 seat table for our dining room and the pedestal table after we moved into this house, leaving our first table (and matching bench) unused, but I kept it because #imafurniturehorder.
Knowing we had one extra table made me think I could make this craft table corner work! When we first moved into our house our breakfast nook was closed off by a half wall and felt very cramped. We opened the wall up into the living room, removed a few cabinets, and painted the cabinets. It left our kitchen feeling much bigger. I didn’t want to take away from that feeling of light and openness by weighing the breakfast nook down with our original table that felt slightly to large and heavy for the space at the time. Instead, I opted for the pedestal table. After a few years of living with it (we do love that little table!) I knew our original table would fit quite well into the breakfast nook and not be too large/heavy like I originally thought after all our hard work on the kitchen.
I convinced Nathan to help me do a shuffle with our tables. We moved our first table (and bench) that was collecting dust upstairs down to the breakfast nook and we moved pedestal table upstairs into the office! It is the perfect size for the office and I can see myself working on many projects there. I also brought up two wood dining chairs that would not be needed in the breakfast nook now that we had the bench downstairs. I call that a win! Changed the direction of the office midway through and I didn’t have to spend any extra money to do so. I also rolled out the rug… it feels exactly how I was hoping! Everything is starting to come together. Although there are still many things left to do.
In addition to moving the table and chairs upstairs to the office I also finished painting the window and door casings, as well as the trim and the closet and bedroom doors!
I took a chance and went bold on the interior of the bedroom door and the closet doors with a very dark (Benjamin Moore Salamander) and I LOVE it. I had this paint on hand already because as you might remember I tried painting our dining room this color, but it was just wayyy too dark for our north facing dining room and was very trippy on the eyes when the beaded chandelier in the dining room was on. After one coat in the dining room I changed my mind and painted it Chelsea Gray instead (see all about that fiasco here) so I had half a gallon of the matte wall paint leftover. I loved this paint color even though it didn’t work in the dining room and was determined to use it elsewhere. I don’t normally paint doors matte or flat, but I figured these doors are not in a main area of our house and won’t get a ton of action, so I wasn’t worried about the wear on them that might show with matte paint.
There has been definite visual progress in the office this past week, but there are still many things left to do on this list to cross the finish line. Here’s everything we have left to get the space completed (I keep adding things to the list every week):
- clean everything out of the room/organize/donate unused items
- prime: window and door casings
- paint:walls, baseboards, closet, and closet doors
- remove and patch outdated intercom system
- replace electric outlets and plugs
- wallpaper the closet (leftover material we have from a previous project)
- install Ikea closet organizing system (leftover material we have from a previous project)
- order and install a window covering
- order a pendant light (??)
- order a rug
- order a desk chair
- DIY a giant mood board/pinboard
- makeover existing filing cabinet (paint & hardware)
- paint storage cabinet
- hang art
- organize, decorate and style the space!
There’s a lot to do for this space, but hopefully we can knock a good chunk out this weekend! I’ll be back with weekly updates for each of the next 2 weeks, but in the meantime be sure to check out the other participants here. As always, I would love for you to follow along as we make over this space! Follow along on Instagram for more updates along the way!
